Pros
Good food, nice people, good gym
Cons
Tedious tedious work and very top-heavy workforce. I spent 8 years active duty and 3 years in the reserves while in grad school only to come into MITRE and be treated like a child. My work consisted mostly of taking notes. I wasn’t even allowed to run a meeting. In the military and in consultant agencies that do it right. They have a regular pyramid structure. At the bottom of the pyramid are the majority of the workforce— junior folk who perform the majority of the work. This allows them to gain knowledge, experience and expertise, and to differentiate themselves amongst each other in order to merit promotion. Then they are able to build upon that expertise the more administrative and managerial their positions become. MITRE is the opposite, at least in the business analyst side. They bring in career Big 4 consultants or retired Colonels/Captains who are looking for a chill gig with decent pay and benefits. They are in charge of the projects and get to perform all the real work on the projects. The more junior employees are thrown scraps—note taking etc. This prevents us from improving our knowledge, experience, and resume. Senior management does not care whether the junior employees have a problem with this work structure because the junior employees are vastly outnumbered and because they are junior employees, so what do they know? The feedback from junior employees and constant turnover (who go on to better companies and jobs, ones where they are given agency) does not seem to affect the position of management. They are living the good life of being Level 5s and 6s, so why would they want anything to change? They are unwilling or unable to understand that they have consolidated power for themselves at the expense of everyone else. There’s a lot of “feel good” mentorship programs with the Group Leaders and what not, but any real feedback that does not agree with the opinion and decisions of the Senior Management is not desired during these sessions. Also, there is a lot of lip service to how “we’re all the same no matter what Level you are, the ideas are what are most important.” Not true Department had this one Level 5 or 6 or whatever who thought she was like the Supreme Leader of MITRE consulting and we all had to bow down to her. Constantly spoke of how her dad was a career Navy pilot blah blah blah she went to Harvard Kennedy blah blah blah blah. Constantly treated junior employees like garbage. Berated me for not taking notes from some phone call where there was no expectation that I should take notes. CONSTANTLY berated me. Assigns a co-worker and I “homework” to learn a concept. We do the work, present it to her, and all she does is tear us and our work down with no guidance on improvement. Would CONSTANTLY tear me down and ANY feedback on it improving her attitude or her lack of basic respect for others was met with severe criticism. Meanwhile, throughout all of this mistreatment mismanagement, and general dysfunction, management plays it like they are the most progressive, liberal, forward-leaning management that ever existed. I DONT need yet another “mentor” session.” GIVE ME SOME REAL WORK TO DO